Picture update

I thought I would add some pictures of the work we have been up to. I'm avoiding the shop while the EEs works on the car and make it beep constantly.


EES doing some final testing on the car before the road trip

















Tim the Beaver with solar car making tools. Razor blades are the best tools for everything from cutting holes in Kevlar layups to applying epoxy. The wall behind him has some testing samples of composites methods we use on the car.

















Video of our canopy hinge working. It's made with a four bar linkage that results in upward lift before turning to make the canopy clear the roll bar.



FEA of the spindle. The main point of all the testing is to find out what breaks before the race. The spindle shown was bent during some initial testing on a track. Nothing else was damaged including the driver. The wrong alloy and heat treatment was ordered on this bent spindle, which has been fixed. It was fairly amusing how perfectly the FEA and real deformation matched.

















Applying the solar array. After encapsulating our solar cells, we applied them to the array using silicone adhesive. The sand bags are to keep everything flat while the silicone cure. We did this process at night to avoid bothering everyone in the building with the smell of vinegar, which silicone release while it cures.

Testing for the Summer Road Trip

We're heading out on a summer road trip tomorrow for some open road testing and sponsor visits. After finals, the team has been working hard on final preparations to get the car fully operational.
Our approximate route is below.


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Unveiling!

On April 12 he MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team unveiled its 2011 World Solar Challenge Vehicle Chopper del Sol. The event was held in Lobby 10 and featured talks regarding the various systems of the car as well as new design features.

The event was a great success! Thank you to all the sponsors, MIT faculty, students, press, alumni, as well as family and friends who attended. Here are a couple more pictures courtesy of Ed Moriarty:

Check out our new homepage with Chopper del Sol! Thanks to James Granata for the awesome design.

Over the next couple weeks the team will be testing Chopper around Cambridge as well as during our team road trip to the midwest. Check back here for more updates throughout the summer!

New Platinum & Gold Sponsors

The MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team is proud to announce the addition of our newest Platinum Sponsor: Konica Minolta.

Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta), a leading provider of advanced imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop, announced they will be supporting MIT SEVT for the next two years as a Platinum Sponsor.

“Sponsoring the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team and their participation in the upcoming World Solar challenge supports our dedication to both innovation and the environment,” said Kevin Kern, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. “The team’s efforts demonstrate what can happen when two important initiatives come together, and as a Platinum Sponsor, this further demonstrates how stakeholders can count on Konica Minolta to continue encouraging advancements in environmental sustainability.”

We look forward to working with Konica Minolta in the future - they recently came by the shop at MIT to present the team with a check!


Also joining the MIT SEVT family as a Silver Sponsor is Lockheed Martin. We met our Lockheed contact at a career fair on campus that SEVT attended, and Lockheed was very interested in supporting the team. Recently, a group of Lockheed executives toured the shop to check out the car and our facility - they left very impressed and vowed to support the team in the future.

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Three New Bronze Sponsors

TDK-Lambda, Interface Inc, and Omega Engineering have become our newest Bronze sponsors with donations of parts for a motor dyno I am working on to test the efficiency of our motor and motor controller. We can use this data to make better strategy decisions during the race and to determine if a newer motor is worth the price. The dyno will also be open to other student projects as it provides a motor testing range which is not present in any other MIT lab.








TDK Lambda provided the team with a Genesys 3.3 kW power supply. They has sponsored us with smaller supplies in the past which fills most of our needs, but running the motor a full tilt needs a bit more juice.









Interface has donated a 20Nm torque transducer for measuring torque directly in the output shaft of the motor. This allows for an accurate measurement without other losses affecting the results.













Information is useless without an accurate way to collect it. This 24 bit USB data acquisition module will monitor 16 analog signals ranging from +_ .078V to +- 20V at a 1kHz aggregate sample rate. It also has 500V isolation for peace of mind when plugging in your expensive (from a student perspective) personal laptop!

HSMWorks Sponsors Team with Software

HSMWorks has donated their full CAM software for use by MIT vehicle teams in our N51 shop. The description of their software below is from their website http://www.hsmworks.com/.

HSMWorks is a fully integrated CAM for SolidWorks, which provides effective generation of high quality 2D, 3D and 3+2 milling toolpaths for high speed machining.

The HSMWorks interface is designed for SolidWorks users and machinists alike. If you know SolidWorks, getting to know HSMWorks will be easy and straight forward.

I first used HSMWorks in another MIT lab and was blown away by its ease of use and speed. It is a huge step up from Mastercam 9 which we previously used and is sure to significantly reduce the number of hours we spend prepping for machining. Another plus to HSMWorks is their incredible service. It was less then 24 hours between asking for the software and having the license keys in my inbox!

THANK YOU to the HSMWorks team.

I'm off to make some G-code sans profanity.

~Rachel